


Because You Can't Expect the Unexpected

by anoyo



Category: Eureka
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/anoyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carter blindsides himself.  He doesn't mean to, but then, he never does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because You Can't Expect the Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Carter tries to get Stark to do something normal, like drink a beer or watch a baseball game, for [knkfics/kouriarashi](http://knkfics.livejournal.com). This is . . . mostly that prompt. You know. If you squint a little. Not edited. I enjoyed writing this, even if it's super short. It's pre-Carter/Stark, not Carter/Stark, but that's okay, I think, it's still . . . them. Yes. By the way, I'm still accepting [prompts](http://anoyo.livejournal.com/181626.html), for the time being. Might as well go see, yes? **Major note** : not edited.

Jack throws it out there at the end of a jibe, when they’ve just finished averting some disaster – adrenaline and emotions are high, logic and common sense are running out, shit was bound to hit the fan in one way or another, he’s just lucky it didn’t during the disaster itself. The point is, he doesn’t expect anything to come of it, it’s some pointless set of words pieced together in what he hopes is a witty rejoinder, but this is Eureka, and he really ought to start expecting that what he least expects is what’s going to come to be. But, well, that’s a contradiction in reality, isn’t it, and Jack’s smart enough to accept the limits on reality, even if Eureka isn’t and won’t.

“Sure, whatever you say,” Stark says, and Jack does an admirable impression of a guppy while he backpedals at fifty miles an hour, trying to remember what he’d said and what Stark is now agreeing to. Someday, he’ll learn to either keep his damn mouth shut or to pay attention to what comes out of it. And if wishes were fishes, well, this guppy would have a few friends in the sea.

It finally comes to Jack that he was goading Stark about doing nothing but math in his free time, and there might have been something about not even knowing what baseball was, and – oh, that’s it. He challenged Stark to watch a game of baseball and to try and deduce the rules with that big brain of his. It was, after all, a numbers game. And now Stark’s staring at him with that “I’ve won” look of his, like he knew Jack hadn’t meant it, so Jack has to mean it, and, “There’s a Brewers game on tonight, c’mon, they’re terrible enough that anyone can follow along,” Jack finds himself saying. It’s a bad idea, but he’s doing it anyway, and he knows it.

“Sounds good,” Stark says, though Jack can see the opposite in the way one eyebrow raises and his lips tighten. Stark would rather be doing probably anything else, but he and Jack have been vying for alpha male for so long, they probably don’t know _how_ to stop, at this point.

“I’ll meet you back at the bunker?” Jack says, barely waiting to see if Stark agrees before walking away as quickly as he can, short of actually running away.

Jack takes the drive to talk himself down from the cliff of “my god this is an absolutely terrible idea, you will murder each other without an imminent, world-ending disaster at which to funnel all of your hate” and to convince himself that he just has to play the host through a baseball game and then gracefully kick Stark the hell out of his house so that he can get toasted and pretend this never happened. Something along those lines.

Stark arrives at the bunker minutes after Jack does, apparently seeing no reason to go home and change out of work attire, so Jack excuses himself momentarily to do so after getting Stark a beer and setting him up on the sofa, directing SARAH to turn on ESPN. When he comes back down, Stark has taken off his jacket and loosened his tie and is drinking his beer, watching the announcers talk about various players, earned innings, batting, and expectations. He has that same assessing look he gets when he’s working on a new problem, and Jack can’t help but chuckle a little as he gets himself a beer and goes to join Stark on the couch.

“Ready to learn a few things?” Jack asks, grinning.

Stark rolls his eyes. “I may be a scientist, Carter, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t once a twelve-year-old boy. I know how to play baseball, as hard as that may be for you to understand. Just because don’t doesn’t mean I can’t.” He smiles into his beer.

A moment passes before Jack laughs, wholeheartedly. “All right then,” he says, taking another drink of his beer; he doesn’t ask why Stark’s here, then – some things are better left to the ethers, especially in Eureka. He gestures to the TV. “Do you know how the Brewers and the Twins are doing?”

“No,” Stark says, still smiling slightly.

“Would you like to?” Jack asks, throwing his feet onto the ottoman.

“That would be agreeable.”


End file.
